If you’re looking to create a unique personal space, it’s normally not going to be possible if you’re buying furniture from the most popular interior stores.
Although it’s super convenient, and sometimes more affordable, to buy your furniture from the standard retailers, it’s often a lot more fun to try and find the perfect vintage furniture instead.
Vintage pieces are usually extremely unique and create the personalised touch in your home that you’re after.
If you want to start getting into vintage shopping in time for your next interior makeover, here’s everything you need to know.
When to consider a furniture vintage?
The first important thing to be aware of when you start vintage shopping is knowing what the term ‘vintage’ really means.
You can often find people online that are selling supposedly vintage items, but sometimes this can be a lie or even a fake piece that is meant to fool people like you who don’t know what the difference between true vintage and fakes are.
Vintage is a term to describe old items, normally referring to items that are more than 20 years old.
Antique will be used to describe items that are really old, not just by a couple of decades.
Retro furniture is normally a term that is used to describe reproductions of styles and designs that were popular in the past, but aren’t the original items.
Prioritise Harmony
It’s not always possible to completely decorate your home using only vintage furniture, so it’s important to know how you combine the vintage feel with the existing modern items you already have in your home.
Having a good mix of old and new styles is a great way to create an eclectic atmosphere in your home that will not be replicated by anyone else.
For example, you could choose to get some statement pieces in your home from vintage sellers, then accessorise with modern accessories to complete your home makeover.
Weigh function over form
You may have gone into a vintage store and found the most perfect item of vintage furniture, but you shouldn’t just buy something because it looks nice if you don’t have any other use for it.
When you find a vintage bargain it can be extremely hard to say “no”, but you should always weigh function over form when it comes to shopping. This includes thinking about whether you will use it at all and whether the piece is even in a good enough state that you can useit.
If you’re trying to think about whether you should keep or integrate an older piece in your modern design, form and function are both important considerations that shouldn’t be ignored.
Pay attention to flooring
Your flooring can play an important role in your design process, mostly because you won’t always have the opportunity to change it so it’s up to the rest of the furniture pieces in the room to compliment it.
For example, if you have beautiful hardwood floors in your home, it may not always make sense to fill the room with pieces of wooden vintage furniture which may clash with your flooring.
Your floors will often act as the base layer for the rest of your furniture so, when deciding whether you should buy the new vintage piece or not, try to imagine how it would look on top of your flooring.
Use appropriate lighting
The lighting in a room can completely change the whole ambiance of a space. Warm-toned bulbs can create a feeling of warmth and relaxation, whereas daylight bulbs can bring a bright and optimistic tone to your home.
You can find a lot of retro light fittings and fixtures out there that can allow you to be creative with your lighting choices, so don’t feel like you have to always stick with the basic options.
Play around with different designs and different colour temperatures until you find something that really works for the room you’re decorating.
Repurpose and refinish
Unlike other pieces of furniture that allow for some level of customisation, you normally have to buy vintage items just as they come – but that doesn’t mean you can repurpose and refinish it.
When you’re shopping for vintage furniture, do so with an open mind as you can always make alterations to the furniture to be a better option for your interior theme.
Unify colours
When you’re trying to mix old and new pieces of furniture together in your home, it can be tricky to get them to all work together in a cohesive way.
What you can do is try to pick items that all follow a similar colour scheme, by unifying your colour choices you can mix different styles of work together while retaining an overall sense of cohesion.
Use statement pieces
Finally, if you really want to create a cool and unique feeling in your home, you can create maximum impact with a bold, large-scale vintage piece like an antique mirror or Italian coffee table.
Whether you’re trying to come up with hallway ideas or interior inspiration for a bedroom makeover, you can never go wrong with a bold style statement.
Once you have decided on a statement piece that will become the centerpiece of your room, you’ll find it a lot easier to find complimentary pieces that work together to suit your interior style.
Reimagine Your Home’s Visual Appeal With Vintage Furnitures
In this article, we’ve given you a comprehensive guide on how you can decorate your home with beautiful vintage furniture.
Shopping for vintage furniture may not always be the easiest thing but, if you do invest your time and patience, we’re sure that you’ll be rewarded with some spectacular new interior pieces to add to your home.
Then, following some of the tips that we’ve outlined in this article, anyone should be able to create a home that follows their own personal style, with an added vintage twist.
If you’ve followed any of the tips that we’ve mentioned, we’d love to hear how they worked for you and how you were able to use them for your home makeover.